A Good Man is Hard to Find (short story)
Encyclopedia
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is a short story written by Flannery O'Connor
in 1953. The story appears in the collection of short stories of the same name, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
. The interpretive work of scholars often focuses on the controversial final scene.
. It was again published in another reprint in 1960 in the anthology The House of Fiction, published then by Charles Scribner's Sons
. A Good Man Is Hard To Find, because of its publication in so many anthologies, became the most well known of O'Connor's works, along with the one that was featured the most in anthologies in general.
The grandmother talks incessantly during the trip, recalling her youth in the Old South and commenting on various things she sees. When the family stops at a diner, called "The Tower," for lunch, she engages the owner, Red Sammy, in conversation about an escaped murderer known as "The Misfit." The grandmother agrees with Sammy's assertion that a good man is increasingly hard to find.
Back on the road, the grandmother, trying to detour the family away from Florida, begins telling stories about a nearby home that she had visited as a child. Upon hearing that it has secret passages, the children become fixated on visiting the house, and they pester their father until he agrees to follow the grandmother's directions. When her directions lead them down an abandoned dirt road, she realizes that the house is, in fact, in Tennessee and not Georgia. Flustered, she upsets her cat, which panics, causing Bailey to lose control and end up in a ditch. The children view the accident as an adventure; the grandmother feigns an internal injury in order to gain sympathy.
The family waits for help. A car pulls up and three men get out, the leader a shirtless, bespectacled man. All three men have guns. The man in glasses instructs his cohorts to inspect the family's car and engages Bailey in polite conversation until the grandmother identifies him as an escaped convict known as "The Misfit." The Misfit shot his own father, he says, though he says that's what he's been told --he doesn't believe it. As The Misfit instructs his accomplices to murder the family one by one, the grandmother begins pleading for her own life by flattering The Misfit. When the Misfit ignores her pleas, she becomes speechless. Panicked, she attempts to witness about Jesus. The Misfit becomes visibly angry: he is angry with Christ for having given no physical evidence for His existence, casting doubt about the legitimacy of Christianity. He does not want to waste his life serving a figure who may not exist, nor does he want to displease an almighty God who may exist; he has settled on the idea that "There's no pleasure but meanness." The grandmother suddenly exclaims "Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!", and reaches out and touches The Misfit. He recoils and shoots her three times.
When the accomplice finishes murdering the family, the Misfit takes a moment to clean his glasses, concluding that "she [the grandmother] would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." He echoes O'Connor's traditional Christian view that this is properly the role of the conscience informed by the Holy Spirit. When his accomplice comments on the fun that they've had in killing, the Misfit tells him, "It's no real pleasure in life."
Again, in O'Connor's view, a phony Christian--that is, the grandmother--through an act of violence finally comes to be genuinely converted. A good man/woman is indeed hard to find. At last the grandmother humbles herself, realizing that she's no better than a murderer and misfit herself--for such are metaphorically her babies, part of the fallen human family. (He is wearing her son's shirt by then--as if to increase symbolically the connection.) She can finally receive saving grace.
Bailey: Atlanta resident with a wife and three children and his live in mother. He crashes their car on a family trip to Florida when he gives into the grandmother's wishes to visit an old plantation.
Bailey’s wife: Quiet woman who spends her time feeding or holding her baby. She is unidentified by name.
John Wesley, June Star: Bailey’s demanding, self-centered children. Their bratty behavior apparently results from a lack of parental discipline.
The Baby: Male child of Bailey and his wife. He is unidentified by name.
Red Sammy Butts: Restaurant operator who agrees with Bailey’s mother that the world is in a state of decline.
Red Sammy’s Wife: Waitress in Red Sammy’s restaurant. She observes that not a single person in the world is trustworthy.
The Misfit: Dangerous escaped prisoner who comes across Bailey and his family on a dirt road after they have crashed. We see that he is having an internal debate of the meaning of life and his purpose in it.
Hiram, Bobby Lee: Prisoners who escaped with The Misfit.
Edgar Atkins Teagarden: Man referred to in a story told by Bailey's mother. He would have been a good man to marry, she says, because he owned Coca-Cola stock and died rich.
Pitty Sing: Pet cat of Bailey’s mother.
Gray Monkey: Pet of Red Sammy Butts. The monkey is chained to a chinaberry tree.
The dominant opinion is that the grandmother's final act was one of grace and charity, which implies that "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" was written to show a transformation in the grandmother as the story progresses. In the beginning, she was more concerned about looking like a good Christian than being a good Christian. This is shown by her selfish desire to go to Tennessee instead of Florida and, more importantly, by her attempts to save her own life, even as her family continued to die around her (made worse by the fact that if she had kept her mouth shut, none of them would have been killed). In the end, she realizes she has not led a good life and reaches out to touch her killer, the Misfit, in a final act of grace and charity. This "epiphany" resembles the grandmother's newly found redemption. Even though she fails, her attempt is not lost on the Misfit, who remarks that through enduring a constant of violence, she would have been a good woman if there had been someone to shoot her every day.
A second opinion on the issue is that the grandmother's final act was not an act of charity and that she is yet again trying to save herself from being murdered. Some say that Flannery O'Connor uses the excuse as the grandmother's final "moment of grace" to save the story from the bloodshed and violence. It is also pointed out that by the time the grandmother touches the Misfit, proclaiming he is her son, he is wearing Bailey's shirt. Other opinions include that it is contradictory of her character or that she was simply again trying to save herself and that her selfishness was never overcome throughout the story.
A third opinion is that the grandmother has many faults but unlike the rest of the family she tries to be a good person and treats her family with respect even when they ignore her. Even when she manipulates the children so they will want to go see the house she wanted to see it is stated that "She said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were". The grandmother feels that to get anything she has to manipulate her family to get it, which is something she doesn't want to do. Also the grandmother is the only one to provide both entertainment and discipline for the children while their parents simply ignore them.
Not every interpretation hinges on a moral judgment of the grandmother, though. For example, Alex Link considers how, until the family encounters the Misfit, the South is mainly something to ignore, forget, package in a movie or a monument, or remember with distorted nostalgia, such that the Misfit comes to stand for the persistence of what can't be bought, sold, or wholly understood, such as death, grace, and "the South."
. Divine grace is a concept fundamental to Christian theology
as unmerited favor. Christians believe the imperfect is made perfect, i.e. people are saved by Jesus Christ. The grandmother in the story gains grace by acknowledging that she helped to create The Misfit and that they are bound by kinship. She reaches out to him as if he were her own. Such religious overtones are common in O’Connor’s work. Related concepts include: Sola gratia
, actual grace
, and prevenient grace
.
Knowing that O'Connor is such a religious writer, many are confused with why she would so often use violence in her short stories. She explains that in her stories, violence is what brings her characters back to reality. In the case of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," O'Connor explained in a reflection piece "A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable" published in 1969 that violence is her way to make her hard-headed characters, such as the grandmother, accept their time of grace.
At the end of the story after The Misfit shoots the grandmother, to Bobby Lee he says, "She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." This quote is showing The Misfit's enlightenment to what the grandmother had experienced right before he killed her. He is saying that he noticed that she was trying to preach the gospel to him, but that it only happened because she was threatened by death. According to The Misfit, if the grandmother had lived her life held up at gunpoint, she might have lived a more righteous life.
but the film does not depict the book or its characters well according to most reviewers.
An original modern chamber opera based on "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" was completed in 2003 by David Volk, a University of Georgia
music doctoral student, as part of his dissertation requirements in composition. The chamber opera was performed at the Seney-Stovall Chapel in Athens, Georgia
with grant funding from the University's Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE). Later that same year, the work was performed at Piedmont College
in Demorest, Georgia
, and in Milledgeville, Georgia
, at "Flannery O'Connor: the Visionary and the Vernacular," an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by Georgia College and State University (and home of the Flannery O'Connor Library). In 2007, the work was performed at the University of Virginia
's College at Wise where Dr. Volk teaches as Assistant Professor of Music.
The American folk musician Sufjan Stevens
adapted the story into a song going by the same title. It appears on his 2004 album Seven Swans
. The song is written in the first person from the point of view of The Misfit.
The story was referenced in the Simpsons episode Homer the Vigilante
when Homer says, "Look buddy, your car was upside-down when we got here, and as for your grandma, she shouldn't have mouthed off like that."
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
in 1953. The story appears in the collection of short stories of the same name, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
A Good Man Is Hard To Find
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by American author Flannery O'Connor. The collection was first published in 1955...
. The interpretive work of scholars often focuses on the controversial final scene.
Background
The short story was "first published in 1953 in the anthology Modern Writing I" by Avon PublicationsAvon (publishers)
Avon Publications was an American paperback book and comic book publisher. As of 2010, it is an imprint of HarperCollins, publishing primarily romance novels.-History:...
. It was again published in another reprint in 1960 in the anthology The House of Fiction, published then by Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
. A Good Man Is Hard To Find, because of its publication in so many anthologies, became the most well known of O'Connor's works, along with the one that was featured the most in anthologies in general.
Plot
The story opens with an unnamed grandmother complaining to her son, Bailey, that she would rather go to Tennessee for vacation than Florida. The family resolves to go to Florida regardless. She spites them by rising early and waiting in the car, dressed in her Sunday best, so that if she should die in an accident she will be recognized as "a lady."The grandmother talks incessantly during the trip, recalling her youth in the Old South and commenting on various things she sees. When the family stops at a diner, called "The Tower," for lunch, she engages the owner, Red Sammy, in conversation about an escaped murderer known as "The Misfit." The grandmother agrees with Sammy's assertion that a good man is increasingly hard to find.
Back on the road, the grandmother, trying to detour the family away from Florida, begins telling stories about a nearby home that she had visited as a child. Upon hearing that it has secret passages, the children become fixated on visiting the house, and they pester their father until he agrees to follow the grandmother's directions. When her directions lead them down an abandoned dirt road, she realizes that the house is, in fact, in Tennessee and not Georgia. Flustered, she upsets her cat, which panics, causing Bailey to lose control and end up in a ditch. The children view the accident as an adventure; the grandmother feigns an internal injury in order to gain sympathy.
The family waits for help. A car pulls up and three men get out, the leader a shirtless, bespectacled man. All three men have guns. The man in glasses instructs his cohorts to inspect the family's car and engages Bailey in polite conversation until the grandmother identifies him as an escaped convict known as "The Misfit." The Misfit shot his own father, he says, though he says that's what he's been told --he doesn't believe it. As The Misfit instructs his accomplices to murder the family one by one, the grandmother begins pleading for her own life by flattering The Misfit. When the Misfit ignores her pleas, she becomes speechless. Panicked, she attempts to witness about Jesus. The Misfit becomes visibly angry: he is angry with Christ for having given no physical evidence for His existence, casting doubt about the legitimacy of Christianity. He does not want to waste his life serving a figure who may not exist, nor does he want to displease an almighty God who may exist; he has settled on the idea that "There's no pleasure but meanness." The grandmother suddenly exclaims "Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!", and reaches out and touches The Misfit. He recoils and shoots her three times.
When the accomplice finishes murdering the family, the Misfit takes a moment to clean his glasses, concluding that "she [the grandmother] would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." He echoes O'Connor's traditional Christian view that this is properly the role of the conscience informed by the Holy Spirit. When his accomplice comments on the fun that they've had in killing, the Misfit tells him, "It's no real pleasure in life."
Again, in O'Connor's view, a phony Christian--that is, the grandmother--through an act of violence finally comes to be genuinely converted. A good man/woman is indeed hard to find. At last the grandmother humbles herself, realizing that she's no better than a murderer and misfit herself--for such are metaphorically her babies, part of the fallen human family. (He is wearing her son's shirt by then--as if to increase symbolically the connection.) She can finally receive saving grace.
Characters
The Grandmother: Bailey's mother that throughout the story insists that the family should go to Tennessee. She also often refers to herself as a "lady."Bailey: Atlanta resident with a wife and three children and his live in mother. He crashes their car on a family trip to Florida when he gives into the grandmother's wishes to visit an old plantation.
Bailey’s wife: Quiet woman who spends her time feeding or holding her baby. She is unidentified by name.
John Wesley, June Star: Bailey’s demanding, self-centered children. Their bratty behavior apparently results from a lack of parental discipline.
The Baby: Male child of Bailey and his wife. He is unidentified by name.
Red Sammy Butts: Restaurant operator who agrees with Bailey’s mother that the world is in a state of decline.
Red Sammy’s Wife: Waitress in Red Sammy’s restaurant. She observes that not a single person in the world is trustworthy.
The Misfit: Dangerous escaped prisoner who comes across Bailey and his family on a dirt road after they have crashed. We see that he is having an internal debate of the meaning of life and his purpose in it.
Hiram, Bobby Lee: Prisoners who escaped with The Misfit.
Edgar Atkins Teagarden: Man referred to in a story told by Bailey's mother. He would have been a good man to marry, she says, because he owned Coca-Cola stock and died rich.
Pitty Sing: Pet cat of Bailey’s mother.
Gray Monkey: Pet of Red Sammy Butts. The monkey is chained to a chinaberry tree.
Interpretation
There are varying opinions of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Most of this discrepancy centers on the grandmother's act of touching the Misfit.The dominant opinion is that the grandmother's final act was one of grace and charity, which implies that "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" was written to show a transformation in the grandmother as the story progresses. In the beginning, she was more concerned about looking like a good Christian than being a good Christian. This is shown by her selfish desire to go to Tennessee instead of Florida and, more importantly, by her attempts to save her own life, even as her family continued to die around her (made worse by the fact that if she had kept her mouth shut, none of them would have been killed). In the end, she realizes she has not led a good life and reaches out to touch her killer, the Misfit, in a final act of grace and charity. This "epiphany" resembles the grandmother's newly found redemption. Even though she fails, her attempt is not lost on the Misfit, who remarks that through enduring a constant of violence, she would have been a good woman if there had been someone to shoot her every day.
A second opinion on the issue is that the grandmother's final act was not an act of charity and that she is yet again trying to save herself from being murdered. Some say that Flannery O'Connor uses the excuse as the grandmother's final "moment of grace" to save the story from the bloodshed and violence. It is also pointed out that by the time the grandmother touches the Misfit, proclaiming he is her son, he is wearing Bailey's shirt. Other opinions include that it is contradictory of her character or that she was simply again trying to save herself and that her selfishness was never overcome throughout the story.
A third opinion is that the grandmother has many faults but unlike the rest of the family she tries to be a good person and treats her family with respect even when they ignore her. Even when she manipulates the children so they will want to go see the house she wanted to see it is stated that "She said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were". The grandmother feels that to get anything she has to manipulate her family to get it, which is something she doesn't want to do. Also the grandmother is the only one to provide both entertainment and discipline for the children while their parents simply ignore them.
Not every interpretation hinges on a moral judgment of the grandmother, though. For example, Alex Link considers how, until the family encounters the Misfit, the South is mainly something to ignore, forget, package in a movie or a monument, or remember with distorted nostalgia, such that the Misfit comes to stand for the persistence of what can't be bought, sold, or wholly understood, such as death, grace, and "the South."
Religious overtones
It is Flannery O'Connor's habit to use the dark and morose to reveal beauty and philosophical prowess, in the case of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” it conveys divine graceDivine grace
In Christian theology, grace is God’s gift of God’s self to humankind. It is understood by Christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to man - "generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved" - that takes the form of divine favour, love and clemency. It is an attribute of God that is most...
. Divine grace is a concept fundamental to Christian theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...
as unmerited favor. Christians believe the imperfect is made perfect, i.e. people are saved by Jesus Christ. The grandmother in the story gains grace by acknowledging that she helped to create The Misfit and that they are bound by kinship. She reaches out to him as if he were her own. Such religious overtones are common in O’Connor’s work. Related concepts include: Sola gratia
Sola gratia
Sola gratia is one of the five solas propounded to summarise the Reformers' basic beliefs during the Protestant Reformation; it is a Latin term meaning grace alone...
, actual grace
Actual grace
Actual grace is, in Roman Catholic theology, a share in God's life. It is contrasted with sanctifying grace, which is a state of being that can be permanent, in that it consists only in a passing influence of God on the soul....
, and prevenient grace
Prevenient grace
Prevenient grace is a Christian theological concept rooted in Augustinian theology. It is embraced primarily by Arminian Christians who are influenced by the theology of Jacob Arminius or John Wesley. Wesley typically referred to it in 18th century language as prevenient grace...
.
Knowing that O'Connor is such a religious writer, many are confused with why she would so often use violence in her short stories. She explains that in her stories, violence is what brings her characters back to reality. In the case of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," O'Connor explained in a reflection piece "A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable" published in 1969 that violence is her way to make her hard-headed characters, such as the grandmother, accept their time of grace.
At the end of the story after The Misfit shoots the grandmother, to Bobby Lee he says, "She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." This quote is showing The Misfit's enlightenment to what the grandmother had experienced right before he killed her. He is saying that he noticed that she was trying to preach the gospel to him, but that it only happened because she was threatened by death. According to The Misfit, if the grandmother had lived her life held up at gunpoint, she might have lived a more righteous life.
Adaptations
A film adaptation of the short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," entitled Black Hearts Bleed Red, was made in 1992 by New York filmmaker Jeri Cain Rossi. The film stars noted New York artist Joe ColemanJoe Coleman (painter)
Joe Coleman is an American painter, illustrator and performance artist.-Biography:He was born Joseph Coleman, Jr. in Norwalk, Connecticut to a World War II-veteran father and the daughter of a professional prizefighter.-Work:...
but the film does not depict the book or its characters well according to most reviewers.
An original modern chamber opera based on "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" was completed in 2003 by David Volk, a University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
music doctoral student, as part of his dissertation requirements in composition. The chamber opera was performed at the Seney-Stovall Chapel in Athens, Georgia
Athens, Georgia
Athens-Clarke County is a consolidated city–county in U.S. state of Georgia, in the northeastern part of the state, comprising the former City of Athens proper and Clarke County. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial growth of the city...
with grant funding from the University's Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE). Later that same year, the work was performed at Piedmont College
Piedmont College
Piedmont College is a private liberal arts institution founded in 1897 to serve residents of the Appalachian area of northeast Georgia, USA. When the college was first founded, it was established as the J.S. Green Collegiate Institute named after a local banker. In 1899, the name was shortened to...
in Demorest, Georgia
Demorest, Georgia
Demorest is a city in Habersham County, Georgia, United States. The population was 1,465 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Demorest is located at ....
, and in Milledgeville, Georgia
Milledgeville, Georgia
Milledgeville is a city in and the county seat of Baldwin County in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is northeast of Macon, located just before Eatonton on the way to Athens along U.S. Highway 441, and it is located on the Oconee River. The relatively rapid current of the Oconee here made this an...
, at "Flannery O'Connor: the Visionary and the Vernacular," an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by Georgia College and State University (and home of the Flannery O'Connor Library). In 2007, the work was performed at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
's College at Wise where Dr. Volk teaches as Assistant Professor of Music.
The American folk musician Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens is an American singer-songwriter and musician born in Detroit, Michigan. Stevens first began releasing his music on Asthmatic Kitty, a label co-founded with his stepfather, beginning with the 1999 release, A Sun Came...
adapted the story into a song going by the same title. It appears on his 2004 album Seven Swans
Seven Swans
Seven Swans is a folk rock music album by Sufjan Stevens. It includes songs about Christian spiritual themes and figures such as Abraham and Christ's Transfiguration...
. The song is written in the first person from the point of view of The Misfit.
The story was referenced in the Simpsons episode Homer the Vigilante
Homer the Vigilante
"Homer the Vigilante" is the eleventh episode of The Simpsons fifth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 6, 1994. In the episode, a crime wave caused by an elusive cat burglar hits Springfield. Lisa is distraught to find her saxophone has been stolen, and...
when Homer says, "Look buddy, your car was upside-down when we got here, and as for your grandma, she shouldn't have mouthed off like that."